Chapter 19
Zaneta bit her nails until she tasted the coppery tang of her bleeding cuticles.
It was broad daylight, so she couldn’t risk leaving the well and being seen.
Her mind raced: Was he telling the Germans where she hid even now?
How long would it be before their black boots stamped down the steps and they dragged her to her fate?
What might he find out about her at the port if he asked?
Despite her empty stomach, she vomited twice, the worry too great to keep down.
The sun had slid halfway to the sea by the time he returned. At the crunch of boots across the rocky terrain above, Zaneta froze against the wall, attempting to fade into the shadows. She held her breath and willed her heart to stop slamming against her chest.
“Zaneta?” It was the soldier. He was still alone, and the beam of his flashlight flickered as he descended the steps. He stopped when she stepped out of the shadows and he saw her face. “You were worried I wouldn’t come back?”
She choked back her disgust at his arrogant presumption. No, she’d been worried he’d return with the Gestapo. If he hadn’t returned at all, she could have continued as before. But she nodded.
“Good news.” He held up a bulging cloth sack.
Laying it on the stone altar, he opened the neck of it and pulled out each item, holding it aloft to show her.
“Candles. Bread! Some early tomatoes, and may I present . . .” Here, he unwrapped a paper package.
“Tuna fillets and a rind of pecorino! As I thought, the officers appreciated the weavings.”
Zaneta’s head jerked up. “This was from your trade of the byssus?”
“Whatever you call it,” he said. “I brought more cloth for you to weave on. And some thread you could perhaps use?” She’d never seen him so animated.
His eyes were shining. His foray into town, speaking his own language, had buoyed his spirits, apparently made him forget they were living caged inside an ancient well house.
The soldier pulled out a bundle of fabric and some spools of thread that stopped the breath in Zaneta’s throat. She knew those spools, that thread.
Measuring her tone, she asked, “Where did you find that?”
“I sold your weavings at a tavern by the port,” he said.
“That’s where the off-duty officers sit and wait for orders to come in.
The owner took an interest, helped me out quite a bit, actually, because he started telling the origins of the gold thread and the weavers who used to live on the island, called water women.
When the officers heard the tale, it made the weavings all the more unique.
They couldn’t part with their money fast enough. ”
Zaneta fingered the cloth and the spools of thread—blue, scarlet, and a saffron orange.
Memories flooded back: their home by the sea, constantly filled with the chatter of her sisters and brothers; distilled images of the family gathered around the table, a meal of fish, pasta, and artichokes; the giant loom in one corner; and the clack-clack-clack of the shuttle as her mother worked the warp.
He prattled on. “So many soldiers are coming in and out of the port now, no one even bothered asking about my unit. There’s a lot of action in Sicily still.
The bartender directed me to an old house, one of those abandoned places by the shore, told me I might find someone who could tell me more about the thread.
So I poked around but didn’t find anyone—they’re all empty—and found those.
No more of that pretty gold thread, though.
I hope you have more because that’s what they wanted most. If I sell enough of that, I can probably score a ticket back home—or anywhere else I want. ”
When she didn’t speak, he stepped closer. “What?”
She clutched the spools to her chest and forced herself to meet his eyes, although she could no longer stop her tears from coming.
She was furious that this soldier had pawed through her home, oblivious to the lives that had once occupied it and the sacred craft they’d fashioned from the sea’s bounty.
“What did you think,” said Zaneta through gritted teeth, “when you saw the way the family must have left, with dishes in the sink and clothes on the line? When the smell of ruined food hit your nose? Did you imagine their panic? Their sorrow when they knew they’d have to leave the only home they’d ever known?
” Her eyes flashed, and she stood trembling.
The soldier’s exuberant smile faded as understanding dawned. “That bartender, he hinted that some of the weavers might have been Jews.” His mouth twisted in a sneer of disgust. “You.”
“I’m a weaver,” she said. “What some call a water woman. Turn me in if you wish, or I can, like you say, make enough for you to sell. The byssus is priceless.”
His eyes narrowed, and for a long time, he didn’t speak.
Zaneta longed to ask what else he’d seen, if anyone had asked where he’d found the weavings, if there was news about the war, but she held her tongue.
It was obvious he no longer saw her as any sort of partner or helper; she’d become a means to an end. An expendable one at that.
“Yes. Yes, you will weave, and I’ll sell it.
No telling how much time is left—the Allies are making mincemeat of the Italians—so you must work fast. They liked the boats—do more like that one.
And for the officers . . .” He removed his uniform jacket and thrust the armband at her.
“This. A byssus swastika could line the pockets, eh? Wouldn’t the Wehrmacht appreciate that? ”
Zaneta’s stomach lurched. The ugly black spider symbol was the last thing the sacred byssus should be used to create.
But what choice did she have? She had to stay alive—it was her mother’s last hope—and now that the soldier knew she was nothing but a Jew, her chances of survival had just diminished greatly.
She nodded. Bile rose in her throat, and she lifted her chin.
She would not be the one to break the line of water women.
They made a fast meal of the food he’d brought, saving most of it for later, and Zaneta’s weaving began that same afternoon.
The handheld lyre loom seemed even more precious now that she could work thread that had come so recently from her home.
It was a fragile connection, but one she imagined she could feel vibrating through her fingers.
On a chalk-gray square of wool, Zaneta wove the swastika as the soldier watched.
She cringed under his gaze, wishing he would at least move about the room.
His fixed stare unnerved her, and she had to pick out and rework several lines of thread more than once.
Achingly, when he was gone to town, she had carefully picked out rows of byssus from the robe she’d worn for her water oath.
The supply her mother had stashed in their bag had run out.
Zaneta couldn’t afford not to use it. If she told the soldier she’d run out, that her usefulness was done, what would stop him from ending her?
Each night, once the moon rose, they ventured out as before, but now he kept a visual leash on her, questioning her direction and intention, as if she suddenly had somewhere to run and hide.
Zaneta estimated the calendar had reached mid-May, judging by the limited produce the soldier purchased at the port and the types of blooms she noticed appearing on the plains.
He went down to the town about once a week, whenever she could produce a finished weaving, and he returned from the port agitated and restless, always spurring her to weave faster, more.
He’d let slip there had been Allied raids on Sardegna, and at night, if she stole close enough to the high cliffs to see the black sea merging with the dark sky, Zaneta could sometimes see lights twinkle offshore, which had to be from navy ships, though at that distance, she couldn’t make out whose side they might be on.
She was agitated and restless, too, from missing the year’s byssus harvest, hoping the bombs and fighting hadn’t harmed the mussels in the cove, and being under the soldier’s constant surveillance and direction.
Grief hung on her shoulders like a constant yoke, and she willed herself not to think of her family.
If she let herself dwell on them, so close to the war’s possible end, she thought she might break in two.
Her shoulders ached with tension, and hungry and thin as she was, her stomach often roiled as though she’d had too much to eat. Exhaustion gripped her in its fist.
One night, Zaneta collected a handful of early almonds from a scraggly grove.
She had just pocketed the nuts when her spine prickled, a primitive wariness.
Zaneta whirled to find the soldier had come up behind her, his hand on his holstered gun.
He stood so close she could smell the unwashed uniform and his musky sweat.
When she turned, he didn’t bother to step away but beheld her with hooded eyes, forcing her with his physical presence to move backward into the almond branches.
“I—I think I’m done here,” she stammered, the bitter taste of one of the almonds acrid on her tongue.
He moved swiftly, grabbed the back of her head, and tangled his hand in her hair.
Zaneta didn’t scream. If someone heard, it would only bring more trouble.
He seemed to consider her a moment, and she wondered what he might read in her eyes—contempt, defiance?
Could he fathom the hatred that simmered there?